Many people love to play music while they work with various apps on their Macs. And when it comes to playing music in OS X, the only app you need is iTunes. While keeping the music playing in the background is good and it helps you stay focused, what I feel missing here is not being able to control whatever track that is being played while I am working in a window other than iTunes.

In order to see the track details, I must go back to the iTunes window leaving my current window as is. It is not the most convenient way of handling your music tracks, making iTunes’ MiniPlayer exactly the solution you want.

The MiniPlayer is a small version of the iTunes music player that can be added to the top of all the windows you are working with and can be modified however you want.

Adding the MiniPlayer to the top of all the windows on your Mac requires just a few steps.

Accessing the MiniPlayer in iTunes

  1. Launch iTunes on your Mac.

  2. Double-click on a track to play it in iTunes.

  3. While the track is playing, hover over the album artwork on the top, and you should see the icon for the MiniPlayer. Click on it to activate it.

  4. iTunes will then turn into a MiniPlayer where you can control your tracks. If you do not care about the artwork, click on the hide artwork icon as shown below to make the player even smaller.

  5. Here’s what the smaller MiniPlayer looks like:

Now that you have enabled the iTunes MiniPlayer, here’s how to set it up on top of all the windows on your Mac.

Placing the iTunes MiniPlayer on Top of All the Windows

  1. Click on the “iTunes” menu in the menu bar and select the option that says “Preferences…” It will take you to the settings panel for iTunes.

  2. When the settings panel launches, click on the “Advanced” tab which is the last tab in the tabs list.

  3. In the Advanced tab you will find an option that says “Keep MiniPlayer on top of all other windows.” Select this option to enable it, and it will then allow the MiniPlayer to appear on top of all other windows. Click on “OK” to save the changes.

The iTunes MiniPlayer should now appear on top of all the windows on your Mac, and you should be able to control your music from it.

If you would like to go back to the default iTunes interface and disable the MiniPlayer, then you can do so by clicking on the “x” icon appearing in the top-left corner of the MiniPlayer.

Conclusion

If you have always wanted to control your music from anywhere on your Mac, you can now do that with the iTunes MiniPlayer. The guide above should help you enable it on your machine.

Mahesh Makvana is a freelance tech writer who’s written thousands of posts about various tech topics on various sites. He specializes in writing about Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android tech posts. He’s been into the field for last eight years and hasn’t spent a single day without tinkering around his devices.

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